Relationship Between Depression, Response Style, Cognitive Style And Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory

Overgenerability of Autobiographical Memory(OGM) was found by Williams and Broadben in 1986 accidentally. They have researched the autobiographical memory of patients with suicidal behavior. That these patients have a fixed feature of overgeneralization phenomenon was found. When asking them to recall their past experiences, they rarely make specific events described in the memory, but appear to be more abstract and vague, and lack of specific details. in particular, when they describe the positive experience of the words were recalled clues especially. So, this phenomenon is called " Overgenerability of Autobiogaphical Memory". After that,the phenomenon of overgeneral autobiogaphical memory is becoming the one of the hot issues by scholars. It has been repeatedly demonstrated in depressed and suicidal patients,as well as in number of additional clinical conditions including posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD),acute stress disorder,obsessivecompulsive disorder,possibly borderline personality disorder and nerve disorders. When asked to retrieve a specific autobiographical memory,these individuals instead tend to respond with memories that are general. The more and more researchers began to turn on the normal participants'autobiographical memory from clinical conditions. Some data suggest that individual who react by rumination for depression has more OGM phenomenons than who react by distraction. Roberts et.al also found, individuals who were low in somatic distress show a inverted U-shaped curve,specifically they had a rapid increase in the frequency of overgeneral memories,followed by a deceleration and eventual decline of these memories. In contrast,individuals high in somatic distress showed a steady linear increase in the frequency of overgeneral memories over trials that was not followed by deceleration.But ,the interactions between the quadratic component of trial sequence and cognitive-emotional distress were not statistically significant. In this study, Beck Depression Inventory-â…¡,Response Styles Questionnaire and Embedded Figures Test were administrat in group of college student, in order to analyze the relationship between cognitive style and depression and the autobiographical memory, also we want to examine individual with different cognitive styles and different degrees of depression in trajectories of OGM over repeated trials.The method in this study is closer to real "living" memory. This research was studied the natural emotions and the natural ways of responding to the depression. The trajectoryies of OGM were investigated. The curves were described.The results indicated: (1)There was a significant negative correlation between the cognitive style and depression. Individual of field dependence have the more severe depression than field independence. (2)The data indicated that high depression individuals were more Ruminative, and low depression individuals were more Distractive. (3)In the sample as a whole, there appears to be evidence of a cubic trajectory of OGM. The probability of OGM decreases during the first 4 or 5 word presentations. After this period, a curvilinear effect such that probability of OGM increases and then decreases. (4) There was a significant negative correlation between the cognitive style and OGM. Individual of field dependence have the more OGMs than field independence. (5) There was a significant negative correlation between the depression and OGM. High depression individuals have the more OGMs than low depression. As the words increased, two groups of individual have the same patterns as the whole sample. (6)The interactions between somatic distress and trials was significant. During the first half of the trial sequence, Low in somatic distress individuals'frequency of OGMs progressively is more than high in somatic distress individuals',but in the second half, it reversed.